Specialist batsmen have failed England in Asia

Centurion: Thilan Samaraweera celebrates reaching 100

By Scyld Berry in Colombo

12:01AM GMT 21 Dec 2003

Sri Lanka (563-5) lead England (265) by 298 runs

To save this Test match and series, without material assistance from a thunderstorm out of the Bay of Bengal, will be asking too much of England's skill and resolve. Most Sri Lankan pitches, like the roads, should be dug up immediately (the former too flat, the latter not flat enough) but this one at the Sinhalese Sports Club has some bone in it, some carry, which will make it impossible to keep out Muttiah Muralitharan.

Before England arrive home, however, on Christmas Eve, after 11 weeks on Asian roads, there is some unfinished work to be done. One or other of their top-order batsmen must play an innings of aggression, of flair and footwork, so that this final Test goes down as a disappointing but not dishonourable defeat.

It was the failure of England's specialist batting here - 139 for five was all that it was worth on the opening day - which has been their undoing. Yesterday England's bowlers were impotent in the heat, but if they had been given 400 runs to play with, not to mention some decent catching, England would still have been in with a chance of maintaining their admirable recent record in Asia.

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For future reference, too, it is important that an England batsman should get after Muralitharan and not let him finish this series without a riposte. His first wicket in England's second innings will make him the first bowler ever to take 100 Test wickets on a single ground (Sri Lanka now has only three Test grounds, and the SSC is their headquarters). More than that, though, his series figures so far are 204.4 overs for 257 runs and 22 wickets, and if he is allowed to get away with them his reputation will be even more inhibiting the next time England face him.

Nobody, yet, has pulled Muralitharan, which is how India's right handers are said to have scored off him, or worked him square to either side - not for boundary hits but for ones and twos so that he does not have everything his own way. England's wall of padded defiance served to keep him and Sri Lanka at bay in the first two Tests, but when the initiative was there to be taken here on Thursday, their batsmen disappeared into a hole which was partly of their own making.

England have some valid excuses. One is the new leg-break which Muralitharan has unleashed and which the ICC have yet to scrutinise. If so practised a player of spin as Graham Thorpe is still unable to pick it, it must be mesmerising.

Another excuse occurred on Friday night. A party on the front lawn of the team hotel on the sea-front - take note of the name Taj Samudra if you do not want a good night's sleep in Colombo - kept window-rattling music going until after three o'clock on Saturday morning. Ashley Giles spilled a catch at long leg when Mahela Jayawardene hooked Andrew Flintoff in the tedious morning session. Surely he would have been more likely to catch it if he had not been forced to change rooms in the middle of the night.

In dropping a catch off Flintoff, who later had to nurse a groin strain, Giles was far from being alone. Mark Butcher also missed one yesterday morning at gully, well to his left, and spent the rest of the day nursing a bruised left finger. Marcus Trescothick on Friday had dropped one off Flintoff and another off Giles. To add to this non-collection, he dropped Thilan Samaraweera, when on 98, off Gareth Batty, from an edged drive at waist height, which gave Trescothick a total of two catches out of five.

Poor Trescothick had nowhere to hide because nobody else in this England side can field at slip to the spinners. Nasser Hussain was for long the specialist, but gave up the job before the Bangladesh series and moved to fill the vacancy at short leg. If he had reverted to slip yesterday there would have been nobody to replace Hussain at bat-pad: solving one problem would have created another.

The real nuisance is that English club and county cricket simply has no round-the-bat culture for spinners. At Surrey, Ali Brown gets his practice at slip when Ian Salisbury and Saqlain Mushtaq are bowling, but where are the other specialist slips to spinners? Nothing in his Somerset experience has prepared Trescothick for a task in which footwork is every bit as important as handwork.

If only for their catching around the bat when the spinners are on, Sri Lanka will deserve to win this series. Jayawardene is so light on his feet as well as quick of hand and eye; Hashan Tillekeratne, if he is nothing else, is prehensility itself at silly point or short leg and has one of the highest of all catches-per-Test ratios. But the point is that several others are equally at home around the bat when the spinners are on, whereas England's expertise there must have died out with covered pitches.

In the morning, against the second new ball, Sri Lanka added 70 to their overnight 264 for two: if such a rate had been sustained through the day, England would not have been batted out of the game. After lunch, however, Jayawardene and Samaraweera played some shots after reaching their hundreds and took their third-wicket stand to 262 from 543 balls, the highest partnership for Sri Lanka against England for any wicket: the 243 by Sanath Jayasuriya and Aravinda de Silva at the Oval in 1998, though, was real batting on the go.

Even then, when Sri Lanka had England's bowling completely at their mercy, their batsmen chose still to emulate the weird, self-defeatingly negative attitude of their captain. Jayawardene, so sumptuously talented, at least accelerated to reach 134 from 246 balls before he helped a long hop to deep square leg. But Samaraweera, 404 minutes over his third Test hundred, kept restraining himself until he was sent back and run out by the ever sprightly Chris Read; and Tillekeratne of course, given a springboard of 428 for four, took perverse delight in blocking 40 balls for a dozen runs.

Giles toiled through a merciful evening breeze - while Tillekeratne Dilshan and Upul Chandana finally put bats to ball in a run-a-minute century stand - but his change of run-up has not led to any real change of action and thus of spinning power. Perhaps he should try in a match what he does in practice, bowling off a couple of paces, when his feet do go in a straight line. He has the strength to do it, as did Phil Edmonds when he bowled off two paces in 1984-85 in India after losing his run-up.

Retrospective wisdom has it that Robert Croft should have played instead of Batty. Yet, before the series, Batty was doing more with the ball, and since then his batting has been so gallant he could hardly have been dropped. The truth is that until domestic cricket changes at club and county level to promote attacking spin, England will be outclassed in Asia more often than not; and this, ultimately, is how it should be.